It's been a long while since I posted on these forums but I had a question that I think the answer might help a lot of paladins.

So I'm the main tank for my guild and currently working on getting everyone whos not ready for raiding, ready. That means heroics, heroics, heroics.

We're going through, learning the fights, CCing, thinking about the pulls. Discussing boss encounters and such. We do pretty well with the occassional boss wipe.

This brings me to yesterday. We didn't have many on, it was early morning, and I decided "Ooh hey, I can get some free JP going DPS in a PUG!" So I queued up and 30minutes later, I'm in heroic SFK.

Once inside, I find my group comp is Me (ret), a mage, a rogue, DK tank, and Shaman healer. The DK was at 181k hp but gemmed ENTIRELY for stam (no epics, most 346 blues). He then proceeds in chainpulling with absolutely no CC for anything. We had no wipes, and did pretty good I have to admit, but this was exactly what I've been told is impossible to do in Cata. What was odd... is the next group I got into, they did the exact same thing.

This entire time, as a guild we've been taking it slow. My question is: Should we? Should I be facerolling every pull, ignoring CC? Whould I be working towards being able to do this?

How much HP should I be at before I start stacking avoidance? Right now I'm not stacking stam and I'm at about 144k hp and gemming for avoidance. I hold about 6500-9k DPS depending on the pull. Should I be stacking stam exclusively? As I see it, the more I avoid the more I can keep my healer sane. The more HP I have the faster she goes OOM. Perhaps I'm wrong?

This was guaranteed to happen, and a month and a half after releasesome of us are getting there. But there are still pulls like the4-humanoid packs in Halls of Origination or the big bunches in GrimBatol where you're asking for an ass whuppin' if you just run in anddrop Death and Decay on the whole lot and mash your DPS rotation.

I'd say keep doing the CC. Get good at it. That way when you do getto the fights where it's really necessary everyone will be used to doingthings right. I hate running with well-geared people who seem determinedto show how badly they can play and still prevail.

It's a question of familiarity and gear. My warrior hit 85 Saturday afternoon. Facerolling heroics was in full force by that evening. He had the crafted shield and PvP hat and bracers, and some BoE items to qualify for queue.

Some of these groups were packed with alts -- guild alts, so we all know each other and how we play. Two of the runs my warrior topped damage meters at 30% of damage done (deadmines and SFK), which were slow slow slow but involved only one wipe when someone tab-targeted a second pack and the healer was just too undergeared to deal with it. The next run (SFK, again), someone tab targeted the same goddamn pack, but the healer was one of our raid healers and we did fine. (Imagine my surprise when the same goddamn thing happened three runs later (I had SFK four times yesterday. There ought to be a goddamn law)).

If you're working with your guild then there's benefits from learning how to play together so in a raid situation you'll be better able to deal with shit as it happens. Can you faceroll? Quite possibly. Will it get you gear faster? Maybe, but trying to rush content and then wiping usually does not save any time.

If your healer is solid then by all means feel free to speed the process a bit. If they still run OOM on some harder, longer pulls, then break things up.

AS far as your gearing: you've got a few armor kits that could be swapped for mastery. Gloves, boots, for example. Block enchant on shield instead of a spike, that kind of thing. I would also recommend shading towards mastery vs avoidance for heroic content.

And I would not recommend going expertise at this time, for your level of raid content and progression. My paladin has 0 expertise in her progression tanking set, for instance.

...

I'm trying to think of how practice CCing in heroics translates into raiding tactics, but I honestly can't think of anything. BoT trash, I guess ...

fuzzygeek wrote:It's a question of familiarity and gear. My warrior hit 85 Saturday afternoon. Facerolling heroics was in full force by that evening. He had the crafted shield and PvP hat and bracers, and some BoE items to qualify for queue.

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If your healer is solid then by all means feel free to speed the process a bit. If they still run OOM on some harder, longer pulls, then break things up.

This. The more comfortable you are with the trash packs, the less CC you'll really need. In Grim Batol for example, given the fact that a majority of the pulls will be at half health or less, with possibly one or two taken out, I'll often just burn them all down, focusing on the ones with the least amount of health first.

fuzzygeek wrote:I'm trying to think of how practice CCing in heroics translates into raiding tactics, but I honestly can't think of anything. BoT trash, I guess ...

I dunno about current raid content, only because I haven't raided yet, but I would *always* CC 2-3 of the mobs in the packs that contained the Charscale Commander in RS25. Getting chain-Shockwaved inevitably led to a dead tank, so often 2 of those guys would get CC'd, at least until that Commander was down.

i think sfk is easier to chain pull then any other instance and that developers are aware of this given the limited options for undead control ( pally, priest, hunter) its not guaranteed that you'll get any of those in a group so its possible to just zerg trash packs even with out using LoS mechanics to control them.

the first couple of pulls of vortex pinnacle are similar as there are limited options for elemental control ( shaman, warlock, hunter, sort of pally)

it depends on your confidence as a tank and your confidence in your healer be it a guild healer or a pug.my armory shows me at a 355 average item level and even in a pug i'm perfectly capable of doing most pulls with little to no cc and even then its mostly to keep a pesky hard to control caster away from everyone rather then me worrying about my own survivability. however a few weeks ago when i was sitting at a 330 item level i wouldn't dare make a pull with out at least 2 things controlled and all my cooldowns up.

Not only does your healer have to be solid, but your DPS have to be solid.

Just think: If you didn't CC or pay care to Earthshapers in Stonecore, and just AOE tanked them, you run the risk of them getting a Force of Earth cast off. If that happens, potential wipe.

You can faceroll these instances, but you need to make sure that you set a kill order that makes sense for facerolling...kill those casters that are gonna murder the group first (Earthshapers, shadowdudes in HoO, Big Fireball dudes in HoO, etc, etc).

I'm ilvl 352 (Vyn on Andorhal, can't link to armory on my phone) and I've been facerolling heroics for a few weeks now. As long as my healer is in heroic gear it hasn't been a problem at all. I do usually run with my guild but it isn't unusual for me to pug a healer or a few dps once in a while.

Edit for more clarity. In some heroics its still necassary. I always mark earthshapers in stone core with a skull and cc at least one healer if there are 2 (VP or Throne). For the most part though all my runs are back to normal aoe fests.

It reminds me of heroic Shattered Halls back in BC. It was a bear when everyone was pretty undergeared, but once people started to get gear it was an easy faceroll run.

Notice I say "people" not just "the tank". When fight length is less than time-to-death, you survive. If not, you're in big touble. You can either reduce fight length (geared DPS) or extend time-to-death (geared healer/tank).

And let's face it - we all know more about how to run our toons with the new mechanics than we did when we started running heroics. I had a healer who tried to heal everyone to full on the first boss of SFK the first time we ran it. I was still saving defensive cooldowns for rainy days rather than using them all the time. I was only moving 30+ degrees out of Ozruk's 30-degree cone instead of the 90+ degrees required to actually avoid said 30-degree cone.

I use some CC - mainly where I know something is not going to pull conveniently, or it's a healer, or it does something Really Nasty that I would rather save for when other things are dead.

In Grim Batol, for example, there are the 3 casters controling the gron thing in the room where the forgemaster is. You can easily pull and tank all 4 mobs in those pulls, but because the casters can stop my healer from casting for a bit, I CC where I can so it's not as stressful/annoying for my healer.

One big difference from facerolls of the past is that people use single-target DPS for the most part. It used to be you pulled a group and everyone pulled out their AoE and went to town. Now, they occasionally even target what you are targeting. Limiting the number of people taking damage is a pretty big deal for preserving healer mana and making the instance facerollable.